Sia Coin Updated details

Siacoin Introducing S3-style file sharing for Sia through the new Minio integration

We launched Sia Bounties two weeks ago with a bounty for a Sia + Minio integration, and received an overwhelmingly positive response! David Gore (user dvstate)
quickly submitted a high-quality integration only two days later, and
has been working diligently with several testers from the Sia community
to refine and improve the Minio integration. Today we are thrilled to
announce that the integration is ready for wider use, and it brings some
very exciting new file sharing features to Sia!

Minio
is a distributed object storage server, which allows users to connect
to any data source (like S3, Azure, GCP), create buckets for file
storage, and then share URLs to the files. It also provides an external
S3-compatible API.

With the Sia integration, Minio users can now store their files on the Sia network for a fraction of Amazon’s price.

Here’s
how the integration works. First, on Sia, the user deposits Siacoin and
creates an allowance for storage on the network. Then, on Minio server,
the user launches the Sia gateway, creates buckets, and starts
uploading files.

Uploaded
files are first stored locally on the Minio server, and then uploaded
to Sia. The upload is marked as complete once the file reaches 1x
redundancy on Sia. From there, Sia will naturally boost the redundancy
to 3x, storing the data across 30 hosts all over the world.

When
downloading data, the files are first downloaded from the Sia network
to the Minio server, and then downloaded from the server to the user.
Minio server caches the file for quick downloading. As the cache fills
up, it will automatically delete the oldest files. This ensures that
popular, frequently downloaded files will be fast, while less frequently
accessed files will have a slight delay.

Here’s a great example. We created a public bucket in a Minio server (thanks Luxor for hosting!) called “public” and added some files. You can view through the Minio web interface: http://minio.luxor.tech/minio/public/ or you can download or embed the files directly from a URL. Everything is being stored on the Sia backend:

This means that, with the Sia + Minio integration, users can start using Sia for file sharing today!

We
are thrilled with the success of this first bounty, and are looking
forward to launching the next bounty in a couple weeks. Congratulations
to David Gore for winning the 300,000 SC reward!

For questions related to the Sia + Minio integration, please join the #bounties channel on our Slack or post issues to David Gore’s Github repository at https://github.com/dvstate/minio. More detailed instructions for getting set up are available on the repo.

It’s August, so this means it’s time for our second triannual update! We published the first update in April, and are excited to continue this new tradition. This post is long, but read on if you want to understand Sia’s amazing progress over the last four months and our goals for this year.

We also realize that there’s a lot of uncertainty in the air, and we hope this post helps reassure our community. We’ve seen unprecedented community growth in the past few months, and we so much appreciate all your support and excitement for our product and our vision. So far, we’ve built a truly-decentralized, functional cloud storage network that allows users to upload files, hosts to sell storage space, and miners to generate Siacoin. We are one of the only projects in the blockchain space with a working product. We are committed to building Sia into a true Amazon S3 competitor, and ultimately into the storage layer for the entire internet.

We are committed to building Sia into a true Amazon S3 competitor, and ultimately into the storage layer for the entire internet.

Our Vision

At Sia, we believe in decentralization. We believe that your data should be fully private and in your control. We believe that everyone in the world should have equal access to affordable data storage, and should be able to tap into that storage layer without any centralized party getting in the way.

We want to liberate the unused storage space of the world and unite it into a worldwide free market for data storage. This means that, rather than data being stored in giant data centers controlled by Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and others, it will be stored across thousands of Sia nodes — both large and small — throughout the globe.

Moreover, we want to produce an enterprise-grade platform. We do notonly want to empower individual users; we want to also empower companies like Dropbox, Netflix, Slack, and so many others to store their data securely and for a fraction of existing prices with Sia.

We do not only want to empower individual users; we want to also empower companies like Dropbox, Netflix, Slack, and so many others

We’ve come a long way in the last three years. Today you can download Sia and securely upload files to a large network of several hundred hosts. You can sell your unused storage space and receive Siacoin, or you can hook up your GPUs (and soon your Obelisk ASIC miners) and mine Siacoin.

But, of course, we have a long way to go. On our roadmap you’ll find file sharing, video streaming, and other features that are necessary to compete with Amazon. We are confident we will deliver on these features, and more, and build Sia into the storage layer of the internet. And we have an amazing head start — we are years ahead of everyone else in the space.

Siacoin

We want to reassure the community that, contrary to some recent speculation, we very much care about the price of Siacoin. We know that a higher coin price means more credibility for the project and a more excited, engaged community. We also know that many of you have purchased Siacoin, at many different entry prices, hoping to make a significant return. Thank you so much for putting your faith in our team.

The recent Boston Globe articlediscussed the challenges of building an enterprise-grade cloud storage network with a fluctuating Siacoin price. We were excited to be featured on the homepage of the Business section, but some of the quotes were not provided with sufficient context. The Siacoin price is very important to us. As a company, we do not spend our efforts trying to pump the coin price with paid advertising, exaggerated claims, or impossible forward-looking statements. Instead we spend the vast majority of our efforts on software development, building our decentralized cloud storage network. This will naturally increase the coin’s value in a far more sustainable way.

Since the end of April, Siacoin has massively increased from a market cap of $30 million, to a high of $600 million, to about $250 million at the time of writing. These kinds of rises and falls are pretty standard in crypto, and we are excited to see such large gains for Siacoin in such a short period of time.

We are fully committed to seeing Siacoin in the top ten cryptocurrencies. We believe that we should be in the top ten, as we have one of the most ambitious visions, one of the best development teams, and one of the only working products in the entire crypto space. We will get there by building an incredible product surrounded by a strong organization. We are in this for the long-term.

Development

We released version 1.3.0 Capricorn in July. The update was packed with features, but remote file repair is the most important.

If a host goes offline or loses user data, the Sia software quickly selects a new host and uploads the necessary encrypted chunks of files. Before v1.3.0, users had to store local copies of all uploaded files in order to perform this repair process. This meant that Sia could not be used for backup or archival purposes, as all uploaded data must also remain on users’ computers.

But now, with remote file repair in v1.3.0, users can delete the data locally after uploading to Sia.

But now, with remote file repair in v1.3.0, users can delete the data locally after uploading to Sia. The data will live on the Sia nodes, and bad hosts can be replaced automatically without having to retain local copies of user data. This means that, with v1.3.0, Sia is finally ready for archives and backups, and is a large step closer to being an Amazon S3 replacement.

v1.3.0 Capricorn was released in July

v1.3.0 also included important network scalability fixes to address some growing pains caused by a huge increase in transaction volume. And now users can run the same Sia wallet on multiple computers, download the blockchain twice as fast, and enjoy a less buggy and more stable experience.

Team

Since our last triannual update, I dropped out of Harvard Business School to join Sia as VP of Operations. We also hired Marcin, an MIT student and their Bitcoin Club President, as Software Engineering Intern. And we are thrilled to announce that, this week, Steve is joining the team, and Chris will soon be joining as well.

Steve is joining us as Community Manager. He’s worked in training and support for both Apple and Comcast, and has grown his own Youtube gamingchannel to over 100,000 subscribers. Steve will be working hard to improve the experience across all our social channels, with a focus on moderation and tech support.

Chris is a longtime Sia contributor, and he will soon be joining us as a Core Developer. He’s worked on the wallet and host reliability scoring, and is currently working on host scalability, automatic host pricing, and further reduced blockchain sync time.

Here is an updated list of the Sia team:

David Vorick: Cofounder, CEO, Core Developer

Luke Champine: Cofounder, President, Core Developer

Ava Howell: Core Developer

Chris Schinnerl: Core Developer

Marcin Jachymiak: Software Engineering Intern

Zach Herbert: VP of Operations

Steve Funk: Community Manager

Funding

To date, Nebulous (Sia’s parent company) has raised $1.65 million from a combination of venture capital, angel investors, and grants, initially incubated by Jim Pallotta’s Raptor Capital. We were thrilled to receive a $400,000grant from INBlockchain in July to further support Sia’s growth. This grant came with no strings attached — Li Xiaolai, INBlockchain’s founder, is a Siacoin holder and angel investor in Nebulous.

Additionally, our Obelisk presale has so far brought in almost $4 million of revenue. While this is being used to fund the design of 28nm ASICs for Siacoin and the production of mining hardware, profits from Obelisk will help further fund Sia’s growth and development.

In the last three years, we’ve shown that we can do a lot with limited funds.

In the last three years, we’ve shown that we can do a lot with limited funds. We’ve delivered the only truly-decentralized cloud storage product on the market, with our own proof-of-work blockchain. We’ve been very effective at deploying our capital, and have so far chosen to allocate the majority to software development.

We plan to seek new funding in the near future in order to further accelerate our growth. These funds will continue to fuel our software development, but they will also be allocated to design, branding, marketing, sales, and PR. We’re confident that we can continue to effectively deploy our capital and stay far ahead of any other players in the decentralized storage space.

Design

For Obelisk, we placed a strong emphasis on design, working with talented designers to create a new brand and a new website. We will be turning this design focus to Sia-UI, Sia Explorer, and the Sia website. By the end of 2017, every existing Sia product and service will see a substantial design overhaul.

By the end of 2017, every existing Sia product and service will see a substantial design overhaul.

This will make our software more professional, more elegant, and far easier to use. Stay tuned!

Community

Our community has grown at crazy rates since April! Slack has grown from 2000 members to 8000, Twitter from 6000 followers to 23,000, and Reddit from 4000 subscribers to 13,000. We could not be more excited by the growth, and are looking forward to welcoming even more members to our community in the coming months.

As mentioned above, we’ve hired Steve as our Community Manager. He will help us support and grow the community, and will have a strong presence across all our channels.

We are migrating from Slack to Discord in the next couple weeks

We also have some big news! We will be moving from Slack to Discord in the coming weeks. Slack is built for company teams, and is lacking in capabilities and moderation tools. It is just not built for huge online communities — and with over 8000 members, we definitely qualify as huge!

We will be moving from Slack to Discord in the coming weeks.

Discord, on the other hand, is built for communities like ours. It includes complete message histories, member roles, moderation tools, voice chat, and many other fantastic features.

More details on the move will be posted on the blog soon! We hope you are as excited as we are.

Contributors

Our contributors are crucial to Sia’s success. In the last release, we credited fourteen individuals for making substantial contributions. We also have a group of users currently working to build mining pool support directly into Sia’s core software.

Additionally, we have many community members building apps and hardware on top of Sia. Some dedicated users formed a new company, called Luxor, that is building an overhauled explorer, mining pool, and lite wallet. Minebox sold out its hardware presale. SiaDrive brings dropbox-style features, SiaBerryOSbrings Sia to the Rasperry Pi, SiaHubhas introduced an explorer, and the Wikihas grown substantially.

Many of our members have also contributed through moderating our fast-growing communities. We have an amazing group of Reddit mods, Slack admins, and Forum mods. And many others have developed apps, written user guides, helped answer support questions, and much more.

To all our contributors — thank you so much for helping grow and improve the Sia experience!

Bounties

We launched Sia Bounties last month to great success! Our first bounty was for a Minio integration for 300,000 SC, and it was completed in just days by David Gore (user dvstate).

You can learn more about the bountyhere. Minio is a distributed object storage server, which allows users to connect to any data source (like S3, Azure, GCP), create buckets for file storage, and then share URLs to the files. It also provides an external S3-compatible API.

Minio’s web interface using Sia as backend storage

Minio has agreed to merge the integration into their upstream code, which means that the standard Minio version will come out-of-the-box with Sia support! Anyone who is currently using S3 can try out Minio, and experiment with replacing their backend storage with Sia today.

Minio has agreed to merge the integration into their upstream code, which means that the standard Minio version will come out-of-the-box with Sia support!

We will be announcing our second bounty this week to add Sia support for a backup-related application. Stay tuned.

Network Stats

We’ve seen excellent network growth over the last four months. Since April, we doubled the amount of file contracts from 100 TB to 200 TB. We tripled the storage capacity, from 1 PB to 3.3 PB. And the number of active hosts has increased almost 5x from 145 to 700.

Total contract size was about 100 TB in April, and now it is about 200 TB in August

We only released v1.3.0 a few weeks ago, and we expect that the amount of data stored will continue to increase at a rapid pace. By the end of the year, we are confident that we will see even larger increases in these stats.

Obelisk

We launched Obelisk, a subsidiary that is producing ASIC miners for Siacoin, in late June to much excitement — and to some controversy. ASIC miners do not have the best reputation, but Obelisk is a very important component of the Sia mission. I’ll summarize below, but you can read in much further detail on ourblog post.

Security: The vast majority of cryptocurrencies today rely on GPU mining. This means that they are more vulnerable to attack, as there are countless numbers of GPUs in existence: in large Ethereum mining pools, corporate settings, government facilities, and more. With ASICs, in order to attack the Sia network, a malicious actor would have to buy or manufacture massive amounts of specialized hardware. ASICs make Sia far more secure. Incentives: With GPU mining today, mining pools automatically switch to the most profitable coin. If a coin price decreases, large amounts of hashrate will switch over to a more profitable coin. This is convenient for miners, but very bad for network security and aligning incentives. With ASICs, miners have skin in the game — they can only mine Siacoin with their Obelisk hardware, so they are far more invested in Sia’s success. Decentralization: At some point in the future, an individual or organization would have designed and manufactured ASICs for Siacoin. By being the first to do so, we can ensure that miners are widely distributed in a decentralized way by limiting the amount of hashrate we sell to a single party. Our mission is to build an enterprise-grade storage layer for the entire internet. In order to accomplish that, network security, incentives, and decentralization are crucial. That’s why Obelisk is so important to our mission. Network security, incentives, and decentralization are crucial. That’s why Obelisk is so important to our mission.So far, the presale has been very successful! We’ve received preorders for about 1500 units, which has brought in almost $4 million of revenue. The sale is capped at 4000 units, but we will be shipping by June 2018 even if we do not hit the cap. The project is proceeding on-schedule, and we are looking forward to sharing the final chip specs in the next few weeks. What’s Next These are very exciting times for the Sia community. In the product roadmap, the most desired upcoming feature is file sharing between Sia users. This will help make Sia far more useful, and will create stronger network effects that will further increase our rate of growth. The roadmap further includes a ton of upgrades and improvements. We also look forward to a larger community, Obelisk hardware designs and prototypes, exciting Sia integrations, and a redesigned Sia-UI and website. And we will raise more funding, which will allow us to expand the team and spend more on design, branding, marketing, sales, and PR. Thank you for reading the update, and thank you for joining us on our journey to transform cloud storage. We had an incredible four months, and we are so much looking forward to the next four! – Team Sia

Summer is drawing down and Fall is closing in. In case you missed the Triannual Update
or didn’t catch me in Discord — I’m Steve, the new Community Manager
for Sia. I’ll use this space to get everyone up to speed on new Sia
community developments, highlight stand-out projects from our users, and
share my thoughts on what’s next for us.

We
care about you and what you have to say. We care about making a product
that changes the face (or at least foundation) of storage. Those two
things are inextricably linked. That’s what we try to keep in mind each
day.

Anyway, on with the show.

Discord

One of the fastest growing communities in the crypto space

Many
of you are well aware that we’ve moved our community’s central base of
operations to Discord, so I won’t drag this topic out too far. What’s
worth mentioning though is how smooth the experience has been for our
users. With over 3,000 members joined
and a channel selection bot developed by community members @Aleks,
@eddiewang, and @rudi, the Sia Discord server is a great place to call
home.

We
have channels dedicated to Spanish, French, Russian, and German speakers
(ask a mod to join), channels for discussing renting and hosting, and many others. We have the all important #help channel, the best place to get your questions answered.

Discord
will grow with us, and become better with us. It’s equipped to handle
the needs of one of the fastest growing communities in the crypto space.

Class is in session

Nebulous/Sia
CEO David Vorick led a nearly six hour long discussion in Discord
regarding Sia development, blockchain design, and industry issues. Users
were welcome to submit questions and join in on the conversation, and
we’ll soon have a link to the full archive on our website.

David also did a user Q and A with The Next Web recently. They were gracious hosts, turnout was great, and you can read it all here.

Sia Bounties

Sia
Bounties allow us to reward our contributors for building integrations
between Sia and popular apps and platforms. Our second bounty was for
Duplicati integration and was completed in two days by user @fuffenz.
Duplicati has gone on to merge the code, and we hope the functionality
will be available soon.

Contributor Spotlight

Good
companies attract great users. Great users make the companies they care
about better. Sia delivers an amazing service that has brought some of
the best users in the blockchain space to our community, and we want to
highlight their creative work that has turned Sia into more than it was
before. We’ll start off with Siaberry.

Siaberry
allows you to run a Linux-based Sia hosting and renting platform built
on Rasberry Pi 3. Developed by user @kete, Siaberry is one of the
cheapest ways to get a Sia rig up and running. In Discord, ask a
moderator to add you to #siaberry to join the discussion and get links
to the necessary equipment!

Let’s…

In
closing, I want to get your feedback. Open lines of communication are
crucial to maintaining the kind of positive relationship that has
brought you all here. I’ve got a short survey that I’d love for you to
fill out.

Steve

Siacoin - Community Update Bounties,Obelisk,Siaberry & More

Summer is drawing down, and Fall is closing in. In case you missed the Triannual Update
or didn’t catch me in Discord — I’m Steve, the new Community Manager
for Sia. I’ll use this space to get everyone up to speed on new Sia
community developments, highlight stand-out projects from our users, and
share my thoughts on what’s next for us.

We
care about you and what you have to say. We care about making a product
that changes the face (or at least foundation) of storage. Those two
things are inextricably linked. That’s what we try to keep in mind each
day.

Anyway, on with the show.

Discord

One of the fastest growing communities in the crypto space

Many
of you are well aware that we’ve moved our community’s central base of
operations to Discord, so I won’t drag this topic out too far. What’s
worth mentioning though is how smooth the experience has been for our
users. With almost 4,000 members and
a channel selection bot developed by community members @Aleks,
@eddiewang, and @rudi, the Sia Discord server is a great place to call
home.

We
have channels dedicated to Spanish, French, Russian, and German speakers
(ask a mod to join), channels for discussing renting and hosting, and many others. We have the all important #help channel, the best place to get your questions answered.

Discord
will grow with us, and become better with us. It’s equipped to handle
the needs of one of the fastest growing communities in the crypto space.

Class is in session

Nebulous/Sia
CEO David Vorick led a nearly six hour long discussion in Discord
regarding Sia development, blockchain design, and industry issues. Users
were welcome to submit questions and join in on the conversation, and
we’ll soon have a link to the full archive on our website.

David also did a user Q and A with The Next Web recently. They were gracious hosts, turnout was great, and you can read it all here.

Sia Bounties

Sia
Bounties allow us to reward our contributors for building integrations
between Sia and popular apps and platforms. Our second bounty was for a
Duplicati integration and was completed in two days by user @fuffenz.
Duplicati has gone on to merge the code, and it is currently available here for testing. We hope the finished integration will be available soon.

Contributor Spotlight

Good
companies attract great users. Great users make the companies they care
about better. Sia delivers an amazing service that has brought some of
the best users in the blockchain space to our community, and we want to
highlight their creative work that has turned Sia into more than it was
before. We’ll start off with Siaberry.

Siaberry
allows you to run a Linux-based Sia hosting and renting platform built
on Rasberry Pi 3. Developed by user @kete, Siaberry is one of the
cheapest ways to get a Sia rig up and running. In Discord, ask a
moderator to add you to #siaberry to join the discussion and get links
to the necessary equipment!

Let’s…

In
closing, I want to get your feedback. Open lines of communication are
crucial to maintaining the kind of positive relationship that has
brought you all here. I’ve got a short survey that I’d love for you to
fill out.

Steve

PSA: Regarding Siacoin on Exchanges

Historically,
we have seen that storing any tokens on an exchange can be risky. We
wanted to provide an update on recent actions taken by two exchanges
that currently support Siacoin, and what precautions you should take.

Yunbi

What’s happening

Yunbi
has announced they will stop all trading permanently on September 20th
due to recent Chinese government enforcement of regulations. It’s
unclear at this time if Yunbi will remain open for withdrawals beyond
this date.

What you should do

To be safe, we recommend moving any Siacoin stored on Yunbi off of the exchange as soon as possible.

Source

Closing Exchange Business AnnouncementDear YUNBI Users, After carefully considering the announcement published by PBoC on September 4, YUNBI made the serious…yunbi.zendesk.com

Cryptopia

What’s happening

Cryptopia
is de-listing Siacoin on September 24th due to “ongoing transaction
issues”. Cryptopia has not reached out to Sia for help with this
unspecified issue. We suspect it is something quite manageable, as other
exchanges are processing Siacoin transactions without issue.

What you should do

Follow their guidance to “please close all open orders and withdraw your coins before 24/09/2017”.

Source

The wrap up

We
take your security and that of your tokens very seriously, and you
should too. Take the time and do the research to ensure that your
tokens — of any kind — are as safe as they can be. Good practice
dictates that you do not use exchanges as a long term storage solution.
I’ll update this space as new info becomes available.

Steve

Siacoin - Reminder: Upcoming Sia Hardfork

As most of
you know, we sent out a quick reminder of the upcoming Sia hardfork on
Saturday. We put together this blog post to clear up any confusion and
answer some frequently asked questions. If you have any further
questions, let us know on Discord.

Why does Sia require a hardfork?

Sia,
like many other tokens, uses a PoW (Proof-of-Work) algorithm to secure
the network and to prevent double spending. PoW requires a DAA
(Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm) to adjust the mining difficulty on a
regular basis to ensure that blocks are mined every 10 minutes on
average. This is especially important for Sia since file contracts use
the blockheight as a measure of time.

While
Sia’s DAA has done a good job so far, it’s not without its flaws.
Currently this is not a problem, but it might become a threat to the
network’s security once ASICs
are released, causing an enormous spike in hashrate. For that reason,
we introduced a new DAA in Sia v1.3.0 which is triggered at block
135,000. The new DAA adjusts the difficulty every block and will be able
to keep the network stable during sudden spikes in hashrate.

Frequently asked question

Were there any other changes? e.g. block reward or number of Siacoins/Siafunds?

No,
only the DAA was upgraded. We didn’t change any other consensus rules,
move tokens, change the amount of tokens, change the inflation rate of
the tokens or create or redistribute Siafunds. This means absolutely
nothing changed except for the DAA.

Will there be a new token? Do my coins double like in the Bitcoin or Ethereum hardforks?

No, there won’t be a new token.

Chain splits only take place during contentious hardforks. This hardfork is not contentious in nature.

When does the hardfork trigger?

The hardfork triggers at block 135,000 which is estimated to be mined on Wednesday the 6th of December.

What does that mean for existing Siacoin holders? What do I need to do?

If
you are holding the coins in the Sia-UI wallet, we recommend updating
to the latest version before the hardfork. If you have all your coins in
a paper wallet or on exchanges, you don’t need to do anything.

How do I update Sia-UI?

Just download the latest version from our website and follow the guide on our wiki.

What happens if I can’t update in time?

Don’t worry. Just update Sia to the latest version.

Will my coins cease to exist? Will I lose coins?

No, update your wallet and you will still have all your coins on the new chain.

Does the new DAA increase difficulty?

Not right away. The difficulty will stay the same for now. It will only increase if the network hashrate increases.

Is GPU mining still possible?

Yes, GPU mining is still possible, but will probably not be profitable anymore once ASICs start mining.

SiaCoin (SIA) Release Wallet v1.3.1

Download:

Sia Triannual Update: September-December 2017

What
a year it’s been! Back in April, we started the tradition of updates
every four months — the Sia Triannual Updates. You can read the first and second
updates on our blog. This third update will be a little different.
Rather than focusing only on the last four months, we’ll cover the
entire year!

For
those of you who’ve recently joined the community, Sia is a
decentralized cloud storage project that aims to be the storage layer of
the internet. On Sia, files are split up into tiny encrypted pieces and
distributed across a worldwide network of hosts. Anyone can rent
storage space, anyone can sell their unused space, anyone can mine
Siacoin. We believe that giant centralized data centers, like those run
by Amazon, are inefficient, unnecessary trusted third parties. We aim to
replace all of them with Sia.

Development

We
recently released the much anticipated Sia v1.3.1 update, which brought
significant improvements to the renting experience. The dev team
overhauled much of the upload code, created a new on-disk format for
file contracts, designed and implemented a new write-ahead log (WAL), and more.

We recently released the much anticipated Sia v1.3.1 update, which brought significant improvements to the renting experience.

This
means that uploading files to the Sia network is a much more pleasant
experience. I was able to successfully back up my entire home folder
using the Duplicati integration.
Duplicati compressed 18.51 GB of data (about 26,000 files) into 10.86
GB (about 20 zip folders) and uploaded everything to Sia in less than
three hours on a residential connection.

Besides
our Core team contributions, almost 20 community members contributed to
the v1.3.1 release. This is really important and exciting. As an open
source project, Sia depends on an engaged community of contributors. And
as we build Sia into a true storage platform, we will look to our
contributors to build innovative applications on top of Sia.

For more v1.3.1 details, including a full list of contributors, you can read the release notes here. And if you want to download it and give it a spin, head to https://sia.tech/apps!

In other dev news, we want to give a big thank you to user tbenz9
for cleaning up the Github issue tracker, creating a new template for
submitting issues, and sending out weekly dev updates. The community is
now more informed and engaged than ever on Sia’s development.

Since
January, we have had 3 major releases — v1.1.0, v1.2.0, and v1.3.0. We
are proud to be one of the projects in the crypto space that has a track
record of delivering working software with regular updates, and very
much look forward to introducing new features like file sharing in early
2018.

Community

In
the beginning of the year, the Sia community consisted of about 5,000
total members across our different channels. Today, we have grown to
over 110,000 community members across Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and
Discord! That’s a 2,100% increase in the size of our community.

Today, we have grown to over 110,000 community members across Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and Discord!

But
it’s not just about size — it’s about quality. We believe the Sia
community is one of the most knowledgeable, engaged communities in the
crypto space. Rather than focusing solely on trading and coin prices,
our community discusses the technology and the roadmap. They give us
feedback. They keep us accountable.

Steve
Funk joined us as Community Manager a few months ago. He manages our
team of awesome moderators, makes sure everything is running smoothly
across our different channels, answers incoming support emails, and
sends out monthly community updates.

Steve
has now come onboard full time as Head of Support! In addition to
continuing his existing work, he will turn a new focus toward education
and support. Steve will be launching SiaTV in early 2018, our official
YouTube presence. And he will be working to improve our knowledge base,
guides, and tutorials.

Company

Sia’s
parent company is called Nebulous, Inc. Nebulous employees the Sia Core
team, and is the company that has raised venture capital money for
Sia’s development. Nebulous also owns Obelisk, Inc., the subsidiary
developing Obelisk mining hardware.

Until
now, Nebulous has been headquartered inside the Raptor Group offices at
280 Congress St. in downtown Boston. Raptor is one of our venture
capital investors. Since it isn’t our own office, we do most of our work
out of a house (similar to the Silicon Valley TV show).

We
are very excited to announce that the Nebulous team will be moving into
our own office in downtown Boston, on Batterymarch Street. Both the Sia
Core team and the Obelisk team will be based out of our new office.
Once we move in, we’ll post some photos and start to host local
meet-ups.

Siacoin

Siacoin
has majorly increased since January, from a market cap of about $5
million to a high of over $3 billion today! We are thrilled that Siacoin
has entered the billion-dollar market cap club, and look forward to
seeing even more growth in 2018.

Siacoin has majorly increased since January, from a market cap of about $5 million to a high of over $3 billion today!

We
strongly believe that Siacoin belongs among the top ten
cryptocurrencies. By continuing to release quality software and grow the
network, we are confident that we will get there.

Network Stats

In
January, Sia had about 75 hosts offering less than 500 TB of storage
space, and a total contract size of 35 terabytes. Today we have almost
1000 hosts offering over 3.3 petabytes of space, with a total contract
size of 400 terabytes! That’s an 1,200% increase in number of hosts and a
1,000% increase in paid file contracts being created on the network.

That’s an 1,100% increase in number of hosts and a 1,000% increase in paid file contracts being created on the network.

We
recently passed a 3% utilization rate on the Sia network — meaning that
about 112 terabytes of the 3.3 petabytes available is currently in use,
storing real files.

As
we continue to improve the Sia software, we expect utilization to
continue to increase. When we introduce file sharing in 2018, we expect
the stats to skyrocket.

Contributors

This year we’ve seen a large influx of Sia core contributors, as well as projects being built on top of Sia.

To name a few:

Luxor: a company that builds Sia-centric apps and services. They’ve already rebuilt our Explorer and launched mining pools for Sia and Decred, and they will be working on Sia-UI and other apps in 2018.

Minebox: a company that is building a Sia-connected network attached storage (NAS) device. They were recently acquired by ClearCenter.

All these projects are listed on the downloads page on the Sia website.

Obelisk

Obelisk
is a subsidiary of Nebulous (Sia’s parent company) that is developing
ASIC mining hardware for Siacoin and Decred. As a reminder, ASIC mining
will make the Sia and Decred networks more secure. Check out the blog
post here that details the importance of ASICs.

The
Obelisk batch 1 presale successfully closed in late November with 3598
SC1 units sold (for Siacoin mining) and 2963 DCR1 units sold (for Decred
mining).

We opened Obelisk batch 2 last week and have already sold over 1000 units. Batch 2 is open until January 31.

We’ve
also taken steps to build out an Obelisk dedicated team, and will
continue to do so throughout 2018. You can view the team info on the
Obelisk website.

The first miners will ship by June 30, 2018. This will be an exciting year for Obelisk!

What’s Next?

2018 is going to bring some big developments.

File sharing and other software improvements.
In 2018 we will finally release file sharing between Sia users. This
will introduce a new use-case for Sia, while also increasing network
utilization and network effects. View the full roadmap here.

Enterprise partnerships.
Our goal for Sia is to serve as the storage layer of the internet. We
want companies like Dropbox and Netflix to use Sia to store and
distribute their content. Once file sharing is introduced, we will be
ready to approach companies for pilots and partnerships. By the end of
2018, expect to see several meaningful partnerships with enterprises who are storing data on Sia.

Updated Sia brand.
The Sia software is clean and pure, and we will be updating the Sia
branding to reflect those qualities and better appeal toward companies.
Expect to see an updated logo, color scheme, and website, all of which
will make Sia feel more modern and clean.

Overhauled Sia-UI.
In addition to updating the brand, we have tasked Luxor with developing
an overhauled Sia-UI. This will make Sia far easier to set up and use
on a regular basis. They will start this work in Q1 of 2018.

Community and support.
Steve Funk joined us full time as Head of Support, and he will be
working to put together updated guides and documentation for using Sia.
He’ll also be launching SiaTV, which will include video walkthroughs,
tutorials, interviews, and more!

Marketing and public relations.
We intentionally keep a low profile. In 2018, that will change. With
Sia almost ready for early enterprise adoption, we have hired a public
relations firm to increase awareness of Sia and decentralized cloud
storage. We will also be increasing our inbound marketing efforts,
improving the blog and putting out more high-quality content.

Fundraising and team growth. We will be raising money to grow the team and increase our pace of software development.

That’s it for this Triannual Update! We’ll be publishing the next one in April. Stay tuned.

Siacoin (SIA) - Exchange Update:

I've
been seeing a lot of misinformation and confusion surrounding the
upcoming Sia hardfork, so I'm collecting the details in a single thread.

When will the hardfork occur?

The hardfork will occur at block 139,000.

You can check the current Sia block height at the official block explorer.

There is not an exact calendar time associated with the fork, but we
can estimate based on average block time. At the time of this writing,
there are 139,000 - 138,426 = 574 blocks until the hardfork. At ~30
minutes per block, the hardfork is on track to occur in ~12 days, on
2018-01-21.

SiaStats shows a countdown with the most up to date estimate of when the hardfork will occur.

Why do some sources say the hardfork will occur on Jan. 31st, 2018?

The original estimate was "around the end of January" so someone put
it in a crypto event calendar as Jan. 31st and everyone thought that was
the exact date.

Will the hardfork result in new coins?

No.

Hardforks only result in new coins when the fork is contentious (i.e.
a separate group is supporting the old fork). This is an
uncontroversial hardfork and no development team has expressed interest
in supporting the old fork.

Will the hardfork break any ASICs?

No, this hardfork was announced in December 2017 and is unrelated to any discussion of a softfork to protect the network from misbehaving ASICs.

Didn't the hardfork occur already at block 135,000?

There are two separate hardforks.

The first one did occur already at block 135,000, on 2017-12-06. But that hardfork contained an unforeseen bug, which required Sia to undergo a second hardfork, which will occur at block 139,000.

Why are these hardforks occurring?

The Sia difficult adjustment algorithm needed a change to ensure that
when ASICs begin mining Siacoin in mid-2018, the massive change in
hashrate will not break Sia's consensus functionality. The first
hardfork (at 135,000) was an attempt to make this change, but it
included a bug, which necessitated a second hardfork (at 139,000).

What do I need to do to prepare for the hardfork?

If you run a Sia node (e.g. Sia-UI), upgrade to 1.3.1 or later.

But don't worry, even if you don't do this, your coins are not at risk. You can always upgrade later and recover your coins from your wallet seed.

Does it matter if my coins are in an exchange when the hardfork occurs?

No. Regardless of whether your coins are in an exchange or your local
wallet at the time of the hardfork, there will be no change to your
coins before or after the fork.

What will change after the hardfork occurs?

Block times will reduce from ~30 minutes to ~10 minutes. It currently
takes ~30 minutes for each transaction confirmation. After the
hardfork, confirmations will occur roughly every 10 minutes (the same
speed they were prior to the 135,000 hardfork).

For Siacoin miners, this will bring mining yields back to roughly the
same level they were before the first hardfork on 2017-12-06.

Response to the Sia Community and Bitmain

Last
week, Bitmain announced the Antminer A3, an ASIC miner for Siacoin.
Though described as a “Blake2b” miner, the A3 was designed to mine only
Siacoin. A3 miners are currently being delivered to customers across the
world, and the Sia network just passed 1.4 PH/s in hashrate.

Much has happened in the last 7 days, including an open letter from many long-term Sia community members advocating for a fork. Contributor Michael Lynch put together a helpful timeline of the week’s events.

ASICs and increased hashrate are good for the Sia network. We previously wrote a blog post detailing the benefits of ASICs.
In short, ASIC mining means that Sia is protected from 51%
attacks — even if mining is relatively centralized among a small number
of pools and manufacturers.

When
Bitmain announced Sia miners without warning, we were naturally
concerned. Bitmain has a strong track record in Bitcoin of actively
working to undermine core development, blocking important network
upgrades (Segwit), backing contentious forks (Bitcoin Cash), building in
backdoors (Antbleed), and much more. We consider Bitmain a bad actor in
the cryptocurrency space.

At
the same time, we recognize that we have a conflict of interest. Our
own Obelisk SC1 is now competing directly with Bitmain’s A3. Though we
have the ability to release a version of Sia that invalidates the A3s
via a soft-fork, we believe that doing so before Bitmain has attacked our network would be a centralized, monopolistic move, rather than a proactive, protective measure.

Therefore, we will not be supporting a soft-fork at this time.

Over the last few months, we have thought a lot about our values. We codified three key truths that represent Sia:

Doing it right matters.
We don’t cut corners. We are focused and realistic, thoughtful and
deliberate. The decisions we make and the code we write are
foundational — they must be solid because they must stand the test of
time. Every choice is a choice we’ll live with for the long run.

We’re building an empowered community.
We believe in the power of many. We cannot do this alone. Success
requires active participants who contribute and create value. We share a
common set of beliefs — an ethos of fairness and decentralization.

The internet is for everyone.
The concentration of power among a few internet players isn’t good for
the world. We’re returning sovereignty to individuals. Our distributed,
decentralized storage is stronger, more secure, more efficient, and more
equitable for all. The internet was not meant to be controlled by a
few — it belongs to everyone.

At this point in time, choosing to fork would mean compromising on our values as a company and a community, even though Bitmain poses a serious threat to the Sia network.

So
what can we do to make sure Bitmain behaves? First, forking is still an
option if Bitmain openly attacks the Sia network, or actively resists
important software updates. The community can still decide to invalidate
all Bitmain hardware if we are attacked. If Bitmain takes any action to harm the Sia project, we will soft-fork to invalidate their hardware.

Second, we will encourage A3 buyers to join friendly pools like Luxor and SiaMining.

Third,
we will encourage as many ASIC producers as possible — including
Obelisk — to develop miners for Siacoin in order to foster a robust,
competitive ecosystem with many options for customers.

And fourth, we will lead an effort to build decentralized mining pools, and put resources into new research like microchains that treat mining as a hired service, rather than as a reward.

We
understand that this decision may disappoint those who signed the open
letter, as well as many other community members. And it may also
disappoint Obelisk buyers, who were hoping to have no competition from
other ASIC hardware.

But
it’s important that we stay true to our values and build Sia into the
world’s best decentralized storage network, with petabytes and then
exabytes of stored data. We are trying to do more than build a
company — we are trying to build a new internet protocol. We are trying
to build a storage layer for the internet. And we therefore cannot
afford to damage our reputation and split the community when we are this
young.

Throughout
2018, we will take key steps to bring Sia into the spotlight, including
launching a new website, overhauling the brand, fundraising, and
locking in enterprise partnerships. We hope that these actions will
increase Siacoin’s value so that all miners, including Bitmain and
Obelisk buyers, will receive highly profitable hardware.

Sia Community Update — February 2018

I
hope you all had a fantastic February. We’ve got a lot of news to
recap, big and small. The team was busy getting our Siafund TSO site
launched and working on 1.3.2. Zach has been supporting just about
everything and everyone, and I’ve been working to get our support teams
moved over to a new system, as well as a couple other things I think
you’ll really enjoy. We’re taking all of this energy and momentum and
moving forward as purposefully and methodically as we can. On with the
show!

In this update

Announcing: The TSO

Community Spotlight

How Sia supports our users

Developer’s Corner

By the numbers (and staying safe on social media)

Announcing: The TSO

Sia’s
biggest news in a long time is up first. We are excited to announce
that Nebulous is raising funds to sustain Sia development through the
sale of Siafunds, in what we call a Tokenized Securities Offering.

The
Private Placement Memorandum defines all the terms of the sale and
gives some great examples of how the actual process (which is more like
an auction than a sale) will work. Our brand new Siafunds FAQ,
accessible from the site, explains some of this in easier to read terms.

We’ve got a new website to support this endeavor — Siafunds.tech, and an investor relations team that you can send an email to if you have any questions. Thanks to Luxor for building our TSO site!

Community Spotlight

SiaStats

Next up is a site you’ve probably seen here before. SiaStats
has received a makeover on the outside and under the hood! Already one
of the best tools out there for monitoring Sia Storage Platform
statistics, the site now looks better and loads faster than ever, and
has a mobile-friendly design. Credit goes to the ever humble hakkane (on
Discord) for building it, and m_rom and raffy_p for design input on the
new look.

SiaSetup

We also have a brand new resource that has been very well received by the community. Discord user RBZL has created SiaSetup.info,
an excellent site filled with guides on how to get set up with using
the wallet, renting space, hosting data, and just about everything else.

It’s a great tool for anyone, whether you’re brand new to Sia or just need a refresher. Go check it out now.

If you have any suggestions for future community spotlights, send me a message. My contact info is at the bottom of this post.

How Sia supports our users

I
take support very seriously. It is in my job title after all. Good
service and support will make or break any interaction with a company,
and we make our judgements regarding quality of service quicker than
ever.

So I guess I just help everyone individually, right? Not quite.

Sia
has a big community, and only one of me. Fortunately, I’m backed by two
excellent support personnel on the Sia side, and Obelisk has two
dedicated and fantastic folks as well. But since we have over 160,000
users across our social channels alone, and nearly 1,000,000 total
wallet downloads, we outsource a bit of that support to the #help
channel in Discord. This is essential, and my thanks goes out to
everyone who lurks there waiting for a question they can answer.

Quality self-help is important

Our official support channels, which consist of the Sia Knowledge Base and email address,
are designed to complement each other. Self-help has become mandatory
for modern support systems, and this site will evolve to be a
fully-featured center to get help with anything across the Sia
ecosystem. This new site has already paid off — over the past week
alone, just under 1,100 articles have been viewed, and we’ve avoided an
estimated 480 emails. Our single most-viewed article?

“Does
Sia have an official wallet?” has pulled 180 views itself in the last
week. That’s 180 instances of a user’s time saved, and 180 instances
where that question didn’t wind up coming to our email or being asked in
Discord. Or worse yet, going unanswered.

I
promised an article about my plans for my new position, and I’ll
deliver on that — some things (everything) just got in the way. Stay
tuned.

Updates from the…

To
recap the month in Github: 47 issues we closed, 14 issues were created,
and 47 news pieces of code were merged into the core codebase.

The
Download Overhaul has been completed and merged. This overhaul improves
memory management, introduces a new feature called “Overdrive” for
faster downloads (at a higher price), and sets the framework for
features such as partial downloads and better latency for small files.
Initial reports indicate that Sia can now get a sustained download speed
of over 500Mb/s when conditions are right.

1.3.2
is currently in release candidate (RC) and is being tested by the core
team and those in the #contributors channel of Discord. Keep in mind,
any RC version of Sia-UI may be unstable.

As
always, you can follow the weekly dev updates in the #announcements
channel on our Discord server, courtesy of the wonderful tbenz9.

And
speaking of, tbenz recently helped the core team revise the roadmap
into the Sia Feature Roadmap. It will be updated as part of the weekly
development update, and a Sia core developer will review the roadmap
after every Sia release.

Becoming a contributor

If
you’re interested in contributing to the Sia codebase, there are a
number of issues waiting for community development. Please read the Guide to Contributing To Sia and comment on any issues you plan to work on.

By the numbers (and staying safe on social media)

Movement
on all of our social platforms was strong, but this always represents a
double-edged sword. With increased popularity means increased attention
from scammers. This section will contain a few tips to help you stay
fraud-free in your times on Sia’s social media.

Here
we have a scam Twitter account, dressed up just like our official
account and responding to one of our tweets. Many of you would look at
this and quickly realize we’re not giving away over $400,000, but this
stuff keeps getting posted because eventually it works.

Seriously, this stuff works. And people from all backgrounds and technical experience fall for it.

There’s
other signals here, even for those less familiar with Sia. Our official
Twitter account is SiaTechHQ, without the underscore. Clicking through
to view the scammer’s profile would have shown that they had 2 followers
as opposed to our nearly 100,000.

Now
this particular Twitter account has since been suspended, so we can’t
see the responses to this tweet. They were all from fellow scam
accounts, claiming “how great the process to get free ETH!” was.

Turning
our attention to Discord, please be cautious of any user offering to
escrow transactions. If you pursue this, verify that the account of the
person you are speaking with is the account of a trusted user in this
regard.

Your best defense in a world with endless scams is to assume that everything is a scam until you prove otherwise.

The wrap up

Thanks
for reading! March should see the launch of the auction for the
Siafunds TSO, the release of 1.3.2, and continued improvement for our
support options. Our community is growing and contributing in new and
fantastic ways, and so will our company. As always, reach out with any
questions or concerns.